January 2011
5 posts
4 tags
Touchscreen Misdirection: Your Metaphor Is a Dog →
It amazes me how many times I’ve seen people liberally throw interface metaphors around on mobile touch devices (for individual interactions or aesthetic purposes) without considering all of the other interactions that those metaphors imply.
3 tags
Understanding the Kano Model - A Tool for... →
A useful alternative way of thinking about requirements prioritization. I’ve worked on projects where users’ basic expectation will not be met at launch because of technical limitations and timelines. I knew at the time that the frustrations created from not meeting basic expectations would likely override any delighters that the final product would provide. The Kano model is a good...
5 tags
Android Interaction Patterns →
Design patterns for Android interfaces.
2 tags
Pleasant Things Work Better | UX Magazine →
Designs shouldn’t just be usable and efficient, they should also be pleasurable.
5 tags
Myspace's UX-Induced Death →
A little bitter and direct, but there’s truth in here about how user research can be misunderstood and misused. Similar mistakes can be made when using business stakeholders as a resource for requirements definition.
November 2010
1 post
5 tags
iPad: Scroll or Card? →
Characteristics of the scroll and the card models for touch screen navigation. When should you use one or the other?
August 2010
1 post
4 tags
DarkPatterns.org →
Do you often look at your designs and tell yourself that they just aren’t nefarious enough? Check out DarkPatterns: How designers more evil than you trick their users into doing what they want them to.
July 2010
8 posts
4 tags
Web App Masters Tour Summary →
A summary of the notes that Luke Wroblewski took throughout the Web App Masters Tour. I’ve posted a few of these already, but this summary posts links to all of them. Lots of good stuff in here.
3 tags
Achieving and Balancing Consistency in User... →
A long article discussing the importance of designing for internal and external consistency. The article covers pretty straightforward stuff, but I find that reading this type of article serves as a good refresher every once-in-a-while.
2 tags
Pandas and Lobsters: Why Google Cannot Build... →
An interesting theory on why Google can’t seem to figure out the social web.
1 tag
Ethnography in Industry: Objectives? | UX Magazine →
A high-level classification of the objectives of applying ethnography in industry. I wish that the article touched a little bit on how to apply ethnographic methods in industry, but a nice overview all-the-same.
4 tags
Fusing Content Strategy with Design | UX Magazine →
Content strategy is something that I’m going to have to develop a firm grasp of. This post (courtesy of Toronto’s own Teehan+Lax) provides a good introduction to some ways of modelling and representing it.
In a related note, I’ve just installed ImageSpark (which was created and is run by Teehan+Lax) onto my work Macbook. I haven’t played around with it yet, but I’m...
2 tags
Letter to a Content Strategist →
Content strategy is something that I’m having a hard time conceptually separating from the UXD role. UXD and content strategy require the same input and are aiming for the same ultimate goals, so how can you manage to cleanly separate them into two roles? But I guess you can say that about a lot of things.
1 tag
10 Most Common Misconceptions About User... →
Article on what UXD is not. Likely a good read if you’re gearing up to explain to someone what exactly it is you do.
3 tags
Beyond Frustration: Three levels of happy design |... →
The author suggests three principles of designing happiness into experiences:
1. Mindfulness - anticipating a providing for the users’ needs and goals, even before they realize what they are
2. Flow - making the users’ tasks and the transitions between them so smooth and so immersive that they lose track of time
3. Meaning - creating the perception that the user is changing the...
June 2010
6 posts
2 tags
Making a User Experience Strategy Tangible →
Overview of why making a user experience strategy tangible is important.
2 tags
Experience Themes: The design behind the design →
Describes ‘Experience Themes’, a way of expressing high-level design goals that have been generated through analysis of user and system research. Intended to allow the project team to focus all of the disperate aspects of a project—requirements, IA, creative, copy, content, etc—on the ultimate intended goal. I like this a lot. By making this a required deliverable, you can...
1 tag
Usability Testing: Overcoming fear of moderating... →
Good article on moderating UX research sessions. Here’s hoping that I can make use of this some time in the near future.
3 tags
Web App Masters: A Simple Ladder of Engagement →
Notes on a lecture detailing Twitter’s new sign-up process. They detail how Twitter has defined their users and their behaviour. This user research informed their new sign-up process. So as an obvious-but-worth-stating-anyways follow-up to my last post, Twitter didn’t just implement a gradual sign-up process, they studied their users and then designed a process that better matched...
2 tags
More on Gradual Engagement →
Something to keep in mind when designing your next sign-up form. Also a reminder that something as common as sign-up forms should be challenged. Better designs will always arise if you’re dedicated to asking the right questions.
2 tags
The Defense of Computers, the Internet and Our... →
Good article that’ll bring you down from the excitement that’s been going around over how the internet is doing terrible things to your brain.
May 2010
13 posts
1 tag
Design Games (lecture notes) →
Just want to make note of these for future reference.
1 tag
Anatomy of a Design Decision (lecture notes) →
Notes on a lecture about characterizing approaches to design. This stuff is particularly interesting to me because I’ve only just started my professional design career and though I’ve taken many courses with the word “design” in their titles, most of those courses focus on the activities surrounding design instead of design itself. User research, system analysis, evaluation...
2 tags
Why Designers Should Declare Death to the Post-It →
But is it designers who are pushing this cliche? Or is it the people who are co-opting design and UX as the latest hotness in business school? You can’t stop this type of thing. Big companies get a whif of a new methodology, misunderstand it, and then bastardized it by hiring a whole bunch of unqualified people, all while patting themselves on the back. It’s what they do.
3 tags
Digg’s Biggest Problem Is Its Users And Their... →
About the dangers of not having a designer standing between the users and the product. It’s the same problem when you don’t have a designer standing between the product and the business.
2 tags
Another Security Hole Found On Yelp, Facebook Data... →
This is getting ridiculous.
2 tags
Infographic of the Day: Privacy on Facebook Is... →
Great infographic of the evolution of privacy on Facebook.
3 tags
Facebook Breached My Privacy, And Other Things... →
Terrible article on Facebook and privacy. The problem with what Facebook is doing is that they are changing the rules of the game while trying to hide that fact from its users. Facebook knows that most of its users have no idea about what’s public, what’s private, and the implications of generating and sharing information through Facebook, and they are trying to exploit this in order...
1 tag
A good problem to have | Mike Industries →
An interesting take on Apple’s approach to marketshare and selling their product. I don’t like Apple’s closed-system policy, but you can’t argue against the effect that they’ve had on UX and UI design. And though I’m not their biggest fan, they haven’t come close to earning my hostility in the way that a company like Facebook has, and this might be because...
1 tag
Hi! My name is Andrew and I like mobile tech (Or... →
The extravagant sequel to ‘Hi, my name is Andrew and I play videogames’:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewnovak/3858766743/
2 tags
Video: Facebook Security Hole Lets You View Your... →
Violate your friends’ privacy while you can! Facebook doesn’t feel bad about violating their users’ privacy, so why should you?
1 tag
OxfordDictionaries.com →
I’ve been waiting for years for Oxford to put together a good online dictionary (AskOxford.com never cut it), and it looks like it’s finally here. I’d happily pay a (reasonable) fee for this service just so that I can have full confidence in my definition searches. Now I just need an iPad app.
1 tag
RIM’s split personality strategy - The Globe and... →
How RIM is going to compete with the iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone 7 is going to be an interesting story over the next few years. Android and the iPhone are locking down the diverse, socialweb, entertainment mobile experience, so I can’t see how RIM is going to break into that space from where they are now. According to this acrticle, that isn’t exactly their goal.
I’d...
2 tags
Why do we love to root for the underdog? - By... →
An interesting article concerning the psychology around rooting for the underdog. I bet that if you think about it long enough, you could find some interesting applications of this behaviour to design.
April 2010
57 posts
3 tags
The Huffington Post Starts To Give Out Badges To... →
I like reading about the interest and attention that UX designers are paying to the principles of gaming, but it appears that much of what’s being taken from games are their superficial and manipulative qualities, like leveling-up and inconsequential rewards. World of Warcraft and Farmville have proven that these work, but I’m much more interested in the potential impact to design of...
2 tags
10 New UX Books To Look Out for in 2010 →
2 tags
Phones, tablets, netbooks: taking stock of the... →
Just a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I was dreaming of a tablet that could dual-boot Android and Windows 7, but I’d be just as happy with one that could dual-boot web-OS and Windows 7 (I already have an Android phone and variety is the spice of life… especially when it comes to touch OSs). I should have my iPad by this evening, but I’m already thinking ahead to next year...
2 tags
Report: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Doesn’t... →
Not to make a big deal about an “on background” comment by one Facebook employee, but Zuckerberg has only ever shown disregard for your privacy, so this isn’t all that hard to believe.
3 tags
Cultivated Play: Farmville →
This article is timely because in many ways, I see Facebook’s ‘Like’ system in the same light. Much of the social web is built on this very idea: people participating in services that do not provide returns to them, while providing profits of millions and millions to the companies that run them.
What exactly is the point of Foursquare? And why are you ‘Liking’...
1 tag
Classification Schemes (and when to use them) →
An overview and discussion of a number of different content classification schemes.
2 tags
LukeW | Web App Masters: Backstage at 37signals →
Notes on a talk concerning how design is performed at 37signals.
2 tags
LukeW | Web App Masters: Where Worlds Collide →
Notes on Jared Spool’s talk on how to do good design.
3 tags
Web App Masters: Escaping Navigation Hell →
Notes on a presentation that outlines a structured way to approach navigation design for complex web-apps.
2 tags
Emotional Interface Design: The Gateway to... →
As an engineer and an IA, I react most strongly to clean, informative, and direct interfaces. Dropbox and products designed by Blomus come most quickly to mind (though this is to a point—I wouldn’t want an entire home furnished by Blomus designs). With emotional design (just like anything else), you have to understand the users whose emotions you are trying to evoke.
3 tags
ToRCHI - Touch User Experience Design →
Going to this talk tonight. Should be interesting! Although it would have been more interesting if I could have taken notes on my iPad. Lost opportunity for talk/note-taking-device synergy. Boo.
3 tags
LukeW | Web App Masters: Designing the Social In →
Principles for designing social applications.
2 tags
Technology Review: What's in a Tweet? →
The real question is whether all this effort being put towards mining, categorizing, and presenting Twitter data is worth it. Do we need a detailed taxonomy of FML tweets?
3 tags
UPDATED: Facebook Privacy Concerns Spark... →
It’ll be interesting to see if and by how much Facebook becomes regulated. Too little and there are clear privacy concerns. Too tight and you cripple the usefulness of the service. Though I’m not a good judge of Facebook and its potential. I’m too far removed from it to understand the fawning that everyone is doing over its f8 announcements. I believe ‘em, but I just...
1 tag
2 tags
A guide to protecting your information on the New... →
The easiest way to protect your information is to delete your Facebook account, but I understand not wanting to do this as Facebook is probably going to be the major online force for the next decade. Still, you should do all that you can to protect your information. Here’s a guide that leads you through the settings that will keep your information as safe as Facebook currently allows.